2013 •
Engineering and Technology

Simulation of Air Traffic Control Process to Study Human Decision Making and Human-Machine Interaction

Lead Presenter: Keivan Sadeghzadeh

Air traffic control management requires constant attention and multi-tasking from human operators, which could make the operators more prone to errors. One idea to prevent such errors and provide assistance to human operator is to design smart machines that can assist human subjects in making decisions whenever human errors become more likely. In this study, the main interest is to understand human decision making process, and how humans interact with the machine when they make such decisions. If this could be understood, we could then study why and how human errors occur, and what machines can do to prevent such errors. ææIn this poster, we present our stochastic simulation model of the human interaction with an air traffic control game, as well as simulation results from this model that help us understand how human decisions affect the evolution of the game. In particular, we investigate the effects of human reaction delays on the game simulator, and on human performance in the game simulator, and derive a probability function to be used in future research to predict in real time the probability of crash between the airplanes in the game. ææFunding / Grant # DARPA Young Faculty Award N66001-11-1-4161